the NUANCE // a community health podcast.

Samantha Thomas has spent the last several years on walkability and placemaking projects to achieve greater community well-being with 200 big cities, small towns, and tribal nations. She works with Terra Soma, a woman and indigenous run agency. She has broad community design background and manages numerous policy, planning and design projects focused on the built environment. https://www.changelabsolutions.org/good-governance/the-series

Ms. Sharon Lavigne who runs rise st james, a faith based organization focused on preventing expansion and worsening petrochemical plant pollution in the area.  St. James parish is at the epicenter of “cancer alley", a stretch between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, Louisiana with over 110 petrochemical facilities.  She is a former special education teacher now turned environmental justice advocate, who successfully stopped the construction of a US$1.25 billion plastics manufacturing plant alongside the Mississippi River in St. James Parish, Louisiana. Ms. Lavigne mobilized grassroots opposition to the project, educated community members, and organized peaceful protests to defend her predominantly African American community. The plant would have generated one million pounds of liquid hazardous waste annually, in a region already contending with known carcinogens and toxic air pollution.She is currently focused on defending her community from the Formosa Plastics Plant. She was awarded the Goldman environmental prize in 2021.

Dr. Noshene Ranjbar is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Arizona College of Medicine and training director of the Integrative Psychiatry Fellowship and medical director of the Integrative Psychiatry Clinic at the University of Arizona. Using strength-based, culturally-sensitive, and community-focused approaches, she leads groups, workshops, and trainings for American Indian youth and adults to address diverse challenges including the youth suicide epidemic and promoting resiliency in the face of historical, intergenerational, developmental, and complex trauma. Dr. Ranjbar is also involved in advocacy for refugees seeking asylum to the United States. Her focus is to advocate for a holistic, comprehensive, culturally-sensitive, empowering approach to mental health and well-being for Indigenous communities. She hopes to collaborate closely with these communities to find the best approach  to enhance sustainable methods of supporting mental health. Linked In: https://www.linkedin.com/in/noshene-ranjbar-2039949/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nosheneranjbar/ Twitter. @NosheneMD https://psychiatry.arizona.edu/profile/noshene-e-ranjbar-md https://samehereglobal.org/expert-profile-noshene-ranjbar/ https://cmbm.org/faculty-member/noshene-ranjbar-md/

Dr. Eric Garland, PhD, LCSW is Distinguished Endowed Chair in Research, Distinguished Professor, and Associate Dean for Research in the University of Utah College of Social Work, Director of the Center on Mindfulness and Integrative Health Intervention Development (C-MIIND), and Associate Director of Integrative Medicine in Supportive Oncology and Survivorship at the Huntsman Cancer Institute. Drawing from more than 15 years of clinical experience as a psychotherapist, Dr. Garland is the developer of an innovative mindfulness-based therapy founded on insights derived from cognitive neuroscience, called Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement (MORE). As Principal Investigator or Co-Investigator, he has received more than $60 million in research grants from a variety of prestigious entities including the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Department of Defense (DOD) to conduct clinical trials to develop and test novel integrative health interventions, including trials of MORE as a treatment for addiction and chronic pain.  Dr. Garland is arguably the world’s leading expert on the use of mind-body therapies to address opioid misuse and addiction among people with chronic pain. In a recent bibliometric analysis of mindfulness research published over the past 55 years, Dr. Garland was found to be the most prolific author of mindfulness research in the world. Visit www.drericgarland.com Link to clinical training in Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement: https://drericgarland.com/training-in-more/

Dr. Uma Naidoo is the world’s first “triple threat” in the food and medicine space: a Harvard trained psychiatrist, Professional Chef graduating with her culinary schools’ most coveted award, and a trained Nutrition Specialist. Her nexus of interests have found their niche in Nutritional Psychiatry. Dr. Naidoo founded and directs the first hospital-based Nutritional Psychiatry Service in the United States. She is the Director of Nutritional and Lifestyle Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) & Director of Nutritional Psychiatry at MGH Academy while serving on the faculty at Harvard Medical School. She was considered Harvard’s Mood-Food expert, and has been featured in the Wall Street Journal. Clean 15 --> https://bit.ly/3Dh8VEV Dirty Dozen --> https://bit.ly/3qo6BYR

Dr. Marya and Raj both have amazing work that they have done and continue to do, this background will not do them justice, but to give you a glimpse of who they are, Dr. Marya is a physician, activist, artist and writer who is an Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco and the founder and executive director of the Deep Medicine Circle worker-directed nonprofit committed to healing the wounds of colonialism through food, medicine, story, learning and restoration. Through her work she earned her trust from Indigenous communities where she lives, in Ohlone territory and in places where she has served. In 2016, she was invited to Standing Rock to assist with medical response to increasing state violence towards indigenous people. Dr. Marya advocates for creating a culture of care as the most effective way to manifest impactful change in population health. She believes the interruption of ways of caring through colonial structures disproportionately causes the suffering of Black, Brown and Indigenous people around the world. Rupa is also the composer and front-woman for Rupa and the April Fishes. Raj Patel is an award-winning author, film-maker and academic. He is a Research Professor in the Lyndon B Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin. The second book he authored, The Value of Nothing, was a New York Times and international best-seller. His first film that he co-directed, filmed over the course of a decade in Malawi and the United States, is the award-winning documentary The Ants & The Grasshopper. Together they authored a very important book: Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice Purchase their book here: https://amzn.to/3BvG2Ty

Dr. Michael Goran is Professor of Pediatrics in the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California. He is Program Director for Diabetes and Obesity at The Saban Research Institute. Dr. Goran also serves as Co-Director of the USC Diabetes and Obesity Research Institute. Dr. Goran’s research has focused on the causes and consequences of childhood obesity for 30 years. His work is focused on understanding the metabolic factors linking obesity to increased disease risk during growth and development. This information is used to create new clinical, behavioral and community approaches for prevention, treatment and risk reduction. Dr. Goran has published over 350 professional peer-reviewed articles and reviews. He and his co author, Dr. Emily Ventura wrote a book titled Sugarproof. Dr. Emily Ventura is a nutrition educator, public health advocate, writer, and cook. The focus of our conversation today is around their amazing book Sugarproof. https://sugarproofkids.com/

Jake Goodman is a Psychiatry Resident Doctor with an MD/MBA Degree. He is the most followed mental health physician on social media with over 1.4 million followers and uses his platform to advocate for mental health and empower those with mental illness to seek life-saving treatment. ‍He is also the CEO and Founder of Mental Health Movement, a mental health action campaign that has raised over $10,000 for mental health nonprofits and scholarships.

Professor Howard Mielke is a Research Professor in the Department of Pharmacology at TUlane University. His research focuses on environmental signaling and human health. In recognizing the increasing importance of people living in cities, he has been researching and evaluating the status of the urban environment and its chemical impact on human health and disease. For more, visit medicineexplained.org

Dr. Enrique Salmón is a Rarámuri (Tarahumara) and ethnobotanist. He feels indigenous cultural concepts of the natural world are only part of a complex and sophisticated understanding of landscapes and biocultural diversity.  Dr. Salmón's recent studies have led him to seriously consider the connections between Climate Change and Indigenous traditional food ways. Dr. Salmon has written a book focused on small-scale Native farmers of the Greater Southwest and their role in maintaining biocultural diversity.  It is titled, Eating the Landscape. He has also authored Iwígara: American Indian Ethnobotanical Traditions and Science. Please leave us a review if you enjoyed this episode. Contact us at MedicineExplained.org Follow us on TikTok @MedicineExplained or on Instagram @Medicine.Explained